Sorry, but I don’t think I actually learned anything in public school

In honor of all the photos everyone keeps sharing of their offspring on the first day of school, Alex and I got tipsy last night and tried to remember if we actually learned anything in school. I grew up in a world where the godliest amongst us would never send their kids to public school, lest they be exposed to inappropriate messages like coloring sheets that don’t include humans riding on the backs of dinosaurs. But as much as I’m like hashtag thank a teacher, I’m also a little worried.

I began working full time when I was nineteen years old and trying to pay my way through college. During these initial phases of employment I quickly realized I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t learned anything in public school, as two of my coworkers believed Alaska was an island just like Hawaii, and that both were floating somewhere near (or on top of?) Mexico. We were fully independent adult type humans with 401k(s) and health insurance policies but HOW IN GOD’S NAME HAD THEY NEVER STOPPED TO WONDER WHY ONE ISLAND HAD TROPICAL BEACHES AND THE OTHER WAS FULL OF SNOW AND POLAR BEARS?

Possibly because no one ever taught them how to actually think.

I’m trying to figure out where it all went wrong, because while many of us learned how to read in Kindergarten or First Grade, the comments left beneath articles on Facebook would indicate most of us have forsaken this skill.

I do remember my godless hippie creative writing teacher had a Namaste flag over her chalkboard (clearly a demon worshipper) and passed out Xeroxed copies of an essay on “process v. product” (clearly a breaker of copyright laws) before having us paint instead of write (clearly a person with zero regard for the way things ought to be done).

I remember her because of the cognitive dissonance she inspired: Here was a woman I knew, based on how I’d been raised, was someone I ought to condemn, shun, and fear. But she also had this somethingthat appealed to me, though I couldn’t put a finger on it. I think, most likely, it’s that she actually cared to think about what she did with her life and her existence, which was a radical notion to me. I was surrounded by people who not only did the exact same thing as everyone else, they read the same books, listened to the same music, and wrote with the same fountain pens because these were the things you did if you were on the RIGHT side.

Even now, I can’t tell you where my college diploma is, but I could quickly produce the little blue sticky notes this teacher left on my work, confidently stating “you are a writer.”

I grew up in a state with a lower life expectancy than Mexico, where the solution to “we don’t have enough money to give teachers raises” is to chop the school week down to four days and dispense with bus routes (because lol people who don’t have parents who are available to drive them to and from school in their own cars aren’t the kinds of people who matter), and things like art, music, or drama also don’t matter because the point of life is to plod about in a constant state of bewilderment, unable to determine what is real or what you want or how you feel about any of it.

I remember one of our elected officials opposed an AP History class because it failed to promote the idea of American Exceptionalism. Imagine! Can’t have that. It’s much better to spend your day in a classroom with 40 other kids, digesting a message looped on repeat about how we have it so much better than everyone else and thus need a bunch of nukes and a big wall or else THEY will try and take it all away.

*

It would be easier to compile a list of things no one ever bothered teaching us: Like the fact Japanese American Internment Camps existed. Or that we lost the Vietnam war after committing near-genocide. Or that it’s arguable we didn’t need to drop nukes in World War II but just wanted to announce their existence to the rest of the world à la Steve Jobs in a black turtleneck.

And where do I submit my complaints about never knowing that Estonia– a place where I probably would have assumed people lived in rusting oil drums and ate millet out of mortar shells– looks like a Disney fairy tale and has a lot of good stuff going on (like, they’re #12 in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index, whilst the United States is #45)?

Thankfully by the time I got to college I developed a habit of dropping out for semesters or years at a time so I could travel (to places like Vietnam, where I toured “The Hanoi Hilton” and saw where John McCain was imprisoned and tortured as a POW. According to the museum, the prisoners were treated well, and I even saw a propaganda video of them receiving gifts on Christmas Day. I remember thinking “wow, they can just lie like that? And their people don’t know any better?” which was a blissfully ignorant view I got to say BOY BYE to when I toured the War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and saw the horrific terror we wrought on their people, or asked silly questions like “what? We bombed Laos?” Because of course we did. You just never heard about it.

Maybe there’s an argument for not telling young children about the terrible things we’ve done to other countries (though we seem to be okay with telling them about Hitler) but surely we can still see that our preparation for becoming adult humans is lacking.

I mean– I didn’t ask to be born, I just showed up here as confused as the rest of you. It would have been great if someone could maybe explain what life is, teach me how to think critically, teach me about my emotions, teach me about how there are more than a few ways to do things and often there isn’t one right way, as well as what it means to have an identity, how this forms, how it changes over time and how THAT IS OKAY and anyone who tells you it’s not is probably the villain of your story.

The only life hack that’s proved endlessly useful and accurate is “Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey.”

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Comments

I am a public school teacher (4th grade) and THANK YOU. I bet someone (who can’t read lol. Choked on my coffee at that line) will think you’re insulting us but I see what you’re doing and I love that you kept the notes written by your favorite teacher. We all (well most of us) hope to have such an impact. Much love to you, Aussa! Keep telling it like it is

Yeah, I don’t think I learned anything in public school either. It’s a good thing I was born with the love of reading. I think I read my whole high school and junior high school libraries. I was also a regular at my neighborhood library. I read anything and everything and pretty much am a self taught woman who never believes anything someone just tells me (whether it be teachers or politicians or anyone else). I read and form my own opinion. I think that’s what made me an ‘outsider’ in my family and world. I wouldn’t change a thing.

I was a voracious reader as well— though always so resistant to reading assigned books. I think the first book I really read and loved that was part of an assignment was The Great Gatsby. I was like HOLD UP WHAT IS DIS

I just got back from Alaska so the title grabbed me right away. As a former high school teacher, I always wonder if I ever taught my students anything useful–I hope the best I did was encourage them, treat them with kindness, and get them to laugh. The rest is probably just gravy. I think that seeing the world is the best education. And righty tighty lefty loosey has saved my bacon more than once:-)

Agree, re: seeing the world. Of course, that’s not an option for a lot of people for a lot of reasons, but we can always make efforts to increase our exposure to people and worldviews that are unfamiliar. Myself super duper included.

I before e except after c or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh. Thirty days has September… that said, my daughter is a teacher. Third grade. Thanks to no child left behind it seems she’s a daycare provider. Do you know children are no longer learning cursive writing? It doesn’t matter I guess. We actually had penmanship class. And if you didn’t learn, you didn’t just move on to the next grade level. I don’t know Aussa, it seems the more I know, I realize the vast amounts I don’t know.

It’s definitely true that the more you know the more you realize how little you know. It’s like an expanding perimeter of darkness that only grows with your spotlight on the world. Kind of motivating though…

I had an odd experience with public schools. I sort of hated them, so I determined by about junior high that if I *had* to go, then I was gonna get something out of the deal.
Fortunately, I had a few teachers who knew how to capitalize on that attitude, and one in particular who assisted in my development by treating his students as live, functioning, human beings. His name was Stephan Miller and that name is yet another reason I have for hating the Trump administration. He demanded that we think for ourselves in his class, and no subject was off limits for discussion. “How many of you smoke pot? Liars. How many? OK, why do you smoke it?” After a half dozen flailing rationalizations were offered up, one kid said “Because it makes you feel good?” “Bingo!” He ran his English classes like college lit classes and expected us to get with the program, and somehow pulled it off. We wanted to do well for him, and in the process he showed us things we hadn’t considered yet. I had him for fantasy/satire, which taught some classic satire and the Tolkien trilogy, science fiction, which taught Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” and “Dune”, and Shakespeare, which basically taught me how to think.
When I think of the attitude I brought to class, especially in junior high, the fact that some of the teachers were still able to steer me towards wanting to learn anything besides motorcycles seems somewhere on the border of incredibly fortunate and miraculous. Or as they would probably see it, their jobs.
I didn’t actually graduate from high school, but when I was done attending I was a machinist, a certified welder, a metal fabricator, had math through geometry, algebra II and physics, those English lit classes I mentioned (plus European novel) , a passel of mostly local history that I found fascinating, three years of music (guitar) and the usual round of social studies and psychology, which I found to be the weakest parts of the curriculum.
When I got in some trouble in my senior year and missed more that five days of school, the newly passed truancy law said that I wasn’t going to pass my classes, one of which, civics, was necessary for graduation, so I didn’t graduate. Also. I had moved away from my parents and needed to earn a living.
I was lucky. My sister was the one who convinced me to take Mr. Miller’s honors lit classes instead of English 10C, which bored me to tears. I don’t know if they even let kids learn dangerous things like welding any more, but I did. And although I sort of hated the math, all I heard from everyone I talked to about it was “take as much math as you can”, so I took a double dose of it starting in the ninth grade. I have used very little of it in my life so far, and as I’m 57 years old, I doubt that will be changing much. Geometry did force me to think, and that was probably useful, but most of the rest of it was for college prep, which I never ended up needing.

I’ve always thought that Paul Simon summed it up well for me:

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Your reply totally rocks Doug! Love that you still have memories so vivid about what you DID learn and who inspired you to think in high school. I am currently working on my Bachelor’s degree (at 55 because I quit after my junior yr in college) and I am married to a man who also knows how to think. HE is probably 99% responsible for the fact that I have learned to use my brain because even though I have always looked outside the box, I didn’t learn to THINK outside the box until I met him. I spent the better part of the first 5 years we were married fighting against it, but he pushed me to persevere and I will be forever grateful for that. He will be 60 on his next birthday and it starting a Master’s program tomorrow through Johns Hopkins because he was not feeling challenged enough at his job. He is a physician who does administration work in patient health management and safety. I am constantly amazed at how much information he carries around in his brain and can access it. We are never EVER too old to learn and grow.
The love of learning is what keeps us on our toes… I relate to your reply tremendously! and that Paul Simon song is one of my favs! 😉

That teacher sounds amazing. And yeah— my attitude toward school (“this is all a bunch of pandering mindless bullshit” — though I wouldn’t have used the word SHIT at the time, ha) certainly didn’t help.

Don’t even get me started on math. I BARELY finished high school thanks to Algebra 2. The reason they gave me a diploma (which I also couldn’t find if you offered me $10k for it) is because of something super shady I probably won’t mention until someone gives me a book contract. Ha!

I hated math, although I believe I heard a similar story about math being very important. I didn’t understand algebra until I took physics in college. My physics professor managed to make algebra make sense to me! That was a win in my book! The only reason I passed was because the professor could see that I understood the theory, but struggled with the math. On a side note, my mother steered me toward business classes, like typing and shorthand. (I too am 57) Yes my friends, I took two years of shorthand. In my mom’s defense, it was a good idea, she couldn’t possibly foreseen the advances we would have had….

I live in Az, work as an aide/volunteer in an elementary school. 2 yrs ago it was decided the kids could drop writing and just use computers. Then last yr the teachers struck money was given them for a raise( which I totally agree they needed and more than what they got) so now this year it seems writing is back in per the powers that be. Took about a minute for anyone to figure that out. I did learn a lot in high school but that was because I dated a bus driver so I wasn’t there much LOL Almost didn’t graduate because I honored the teacher strike when I was in 11th and one teacher gave me an incomplete which made me have a very booked senior yr. The sad thing I learned is how many people are just happy to do as told and never question.
I love your writing and am glad that teacher saw your potential

Thanks so much—- and yes, so true that most people are simply happy to do as they’re told. Or they just do whatever everyone else around them is doing. If you’re surrounded by a diverse group of people then maybe that will work out for you. But if you’re only surrounded by people who follow one path… you spend your entire adolescence feeling like there is something very very wrong with you.

The teacher who had the most influence on me was probably my history teacher in year 11/12. She was brutal and never accepted mediocrity. She always drive us work better, think more and be more logical and she never shied away from how horrible South Africa’s past history was. She also occasionally downed tools and told us about how shit men were (it was an all girls’ school). I fucking loved her.

Hahahaha she sounds like an AMAZING teacher. And I feel like by the time you’re that age you *know* what is and isn’t bullshit (you just don’t know the details). How refreshing to find someone who will actually just tell you the truth.

Aussa… you are still awesome and I love reading your posts when you grace us with one. I am totally inspired by your brain and the way you think. I wish I had half the capacity to take the adventures you have been on. I am almost 2 times older than you and you have accomplished so much more than I have, even though I have not stopped learning, living and growing. When we do that, we die..
Rock on! <3

Thank you!!! And I love what you said about learning, living, and growing. Sometimes I start to panic that I’m not doing and being enough, but then I see how much I’ve changed I’m just a few years and it gives me so much hope and anticipation for the future.

I have the same thing, where I only remember the teachers who were renegades. My 7th grade Literature Arts teacher was hands down the coolest person I’d ever met. I still see things and think how much I wish I could share with her because her passion and general interest in living life was so infectious. That is saying a lot because 7th grade was a very long time ago.
I do worry about the future of our country if the education being provided to our children is so substandard. It doesn’t seem like asking too much to want the future adults to have a basic understanding of “how life works” but they certainly act like it is.
Maybe YOU should become a teacher, Aussa. Think of all the young minds you could corrupt! <3 <3

I can imagine few things more horrifying than granting me access to the young and impressionable minds of Young America, haha. But yes– agree on all counts. When I follow my thoughts out to their conclusions, it honestly seems like we’re just trying to create the future disenfranchised and unempowered workforce that keeps making the people at the top richer. But I won’t say more because I don’t want to end up on a list. Oh wait.

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